Moving back to New York was big enough to shake loose my Colorado boyfriend, just like moving out west shook up my New York ex. Me and my dog Ted didn't have easy escapes like my men, so we did what every woman with a family does: we made do. To help Teddy adapt to Brooklyn, I enrolled us into a basic obedience class to make our walks through Prospect Park (and around the neighborhood) safer. He never got used to the big inflatable rat union workers put up in protest on street corners, or the way subway grating vibrates above ground, whenever a train passes by underneath.
My main concern was his safety. After our first lesson, the dog trainer confirmed for me what I already knew. Open runs in Prospect Park are full of the biggest urban danger for every dog walker: bad owners and their pets. I'd seen a guy wrapped in padded clothing teach his German Shepherd to attack him every morning in the park during off-leash hours, which meant we had a serious timeline in place for the most challenging human environment on earth. It was what my new dog-training friend told me, too: if we walked our dogs every morning and evening in the park, it was only a matter of time before our pets would need stitches after an attack.
Fuck that! Ted had survived an e-coli/ebola infection from swimming in a lake in Denver's public park, and that was after he fully recovered from a car accident. It was enough to get me to commit to the classes, even though I was still interviewing in the city for work, rapidly losing weight after my ex left me with the high rent to pay. Mama always comes last. When my friend saw Ted snapping at treats with wolf-like gusto, she was delighted. Oh, so he "responds" to food! That's good! Some animals don't :( Ted was her first Malamute.
We quickly got bored with the easy exercises, which did not go unnoticed in class. The trainer realized Teddy was deciding which orders he would obey, based on his moods and the amount of cooked chicken with brown rice left in my pocket. It totally waylaid her. He was picking and choosing which commands to follow! On purpose!! Right. Welcome to snow dogs. After that, Ted would run through her little obstacle courses, standing by the side of the cones to razz his competition. Every time another dog tried to weave through the cones, he'd smile and "Woo!Woo!" loudly, laughing at them nervously shying away from him.
She kicked us out of the class for disturbing the other animals, which Ted took as a sign, pulling me towards the cold outside and the school doors. One animal was so badly inbred that the instructor had a special corner of the gym coned off just for the doddering old couple who diapered it and picked it up for staircases, because it didn't "do stairs". She said to me that she told them to put the animal down, but they'd already "bonded" with it. Oy vey...
A rather colorful gay couple had chosen the name "Noodles" for their surrogate child (this was before legalized gay marriage), which made the calling-out exercises a lesson in restraint for the entire class, as the masculine-looking female yelled at the top of her lungs in a sing-song voice (for an unnecessary "park-like" simulation): "NOOOOOODLESSSS! COOOOOME!" The short butch woman proudly recounted her training sessions in the park for us during class because she told us, "we're gonna win first prize!" There're fucking prizes?! After that, her and her long-haired femme made no secret that they saw me and Ted as their top competition in the small class. I was just trying to stay alive through the slow starvation of poverty while blocking Ted from swallowing my arm up to the elbow.
By coincidence, my father and stepmother were visiting during our last class. The teacher played graduation music for our walk down the saftey-cone aisle one more time, as I wisely skipped the cap and gown pictures that would only be Ted fodder turned to diarrhea later on. Because of our, uh, lack of commitment to the process, we got second place without even trying. Honestly, I'd never seen two happier lesbians in all my life, smiling proudly as they took the #1 blue ribbon home. It was for kinda hard for us to be angry at them. After all, the biggest bitch in class won.
